I'd never watched a single episode of this show until last night. It's on Amazon Prime so figured I'd give it a whirl.

heh heh

Had to be some of the most cringe-worthy bad acting & writing I've ever witnessed. This episode had Mac pulling a "sting" on the bad guy (who wore all white) after he scams all of Mac's friend's money. And they had this blonde chick with Tootsie glasses who had to be one of the worst actresses I've ever seen. And the bad guy kept going along with the scam and believing every word. Never questioning a thing. silly

I loved MacGyver. The opening music is going through my head right now. Sometimes TV just has to be fun, and damn the realism. You could pick up little tidbits of engineering inspiration from the show.

__________________
1 Roamio Plus
2 Lifetime Premieres, 2 HDs, 2 S2DTs
1 Original Philips S1 from all the way back in 1999!

I was actually hoping this would have more MacGyverisms in it. Maybe I'll try another ep and just make sure the blonde girl's not in it. I didn't think the theme song was all that. Certainly no Barney Miller.

Watched it and loved it when it originally aired. I think I was in junior high school. I've caught some repeats recently. It hasn't aged well. It's bad. Reminds me of shows like The A-Team, Knight Rider, Dukes of Hazard, etc. Loved those too, but they are bad.

Lived for it as a kid. Found them unwatchable years later. It fails as a prime time adventure drama, but is okay if you think of it as an afternoon kids show. My nephew loves it.

Henry Winkler was one of the producers, and I think one of the people who slowly emasculated Mac. By the end of the series Mac was working with underprivileged street kids (handsome young blacks like Cuba Gooding Jr.) and he wasn't allowed to blow things up.

If it was made more recently it would look like Burn Notice (nearly as silly, but with higher production values and a somewhat higher body count).

Henry Winkler was one of the producers, and I think one of the people who slowly emasculated Mac. By the end of the series Mac was working with underprivileged street kids (handsome young blacks like Cuba Gooding Jr.) and he wasn't allowed to blow things up.

I didn't notice a big change as the seasons progressed. MacGyver was always big on non-violent methods, at least if you define that as people do not get killed or maimed. He does not mind an explosion if no one is killed, and he is not above punching people (after pulling their coats down onto their arms)...although he always seemed to use a standard punch and then shake his knuckles in pain...you'd think he would have learned to use a hammer punch or karate chop instead, to save his knuckles.

He always seemed undersexed, though. Lots of women that he saved seemed enamored of him, but he rarely slept with them. Teri Hatcher's character kept showing up, and I don't think he ever slept with her, either.

One big thing with MacGyver was "no guns." Likewise, I don't remember anybody ever dying. His explosions were diversions, blowing up walls to escape, etc. Reminiscent of the GI Joe cartoon of the same era. Blow up a plane? There was always a parachute showing the pilot making it to safety. MacGyver really was about using brains to solve problems without hurting people. I don't recall this changing over the years, but, admittedly, this was a long time ago.

I like the comment comparing MacGyver to Burn Notice. I think there is a definite parallel. Michael Weston (on Burn Notice) goes out of his way to avoid killing. Sometimes it happens but he tries to avoid it, even when letting Fi blow up the baddies would be the easiest solution.

The Jack Dalton character (Bruce McGill) was pretty cool. A bush pilot. Like a character taken out of an Indian Jones movie.

IIRC there were ads for the show running on USA several years ago showing Mac tinkering with something. The voiceover said "what he's doing? what's he doing with that thing?" And the rest of the ad was the name of the show and when it was airing. Funny and catchy.

I almost started watching it, but I decided that if I wanted an RDA fix I would be better off with Stargate SG-1.

Anyway, Bob_Newhart, just wanted to let you know I'll be hearing "MacGuyver -- what's he doing? what's he doing with that thing?" in my head all day long. Thanks -- I think.

__________________
"The capacity of human beings to disappoint me is never ending." -- Ereth

I have bad memories of this show because ABC used to run it in late night years ago, and I was working at the local affiliate and had to watch it because we ran the local commercial breaks. I wasn't a big fan to begin with, then having to sit through the reruns definitely put the nail in the coffin.

One big thing with MacGyver was "no guns." Likewise, I don't remember anybody ever dying. His explosions were diversions, blowing up walls to escape, etc. Reminiscent of the GI Joe cartoon of the same era. Blow up a plane? There was always a parachute showing the pilot making it to safety. MacGyver really was about using brains to solve problems without hurting people. I don't recall this changing over the years, but, admittedly, this was a long time ago.

I like the comment comparing MacGyver to Burn Notice. I think there is a definite parallel. Michael Weston (on Burn Notice) goes out of his way to avoid killing. Sometimes it happens but he tries to avoid it, even when letting Fi blow up the baddies would be the easiest solution.

The Jack Dalton character (Bruce McGill) was pretty cool. A bush pilot. Like a character taken out of an Indian Jones movie.

Didn't he shoot an assult rifle in the first episode?

MacGyver had started when I was in college. My brother always talked about it and really liked it but I didn't start watching MacGyver until the last two or three seasons. So I caught up with the first four or five seasons by recording around 5 to 10 epsiodes a week that aired on cable. Luckily they were shown in the order they aired.

I really enjoyed it when I was able to binge watch them every weekend from my VCR recordings. It became my favorite show at the time.

i liked the earlier shows better than th latter ones. At some point they ended the voice overs(or most of it) they had in each epsiode. The show was certainly very different in the last few seasons than it was in the first few.

i even bought some MacGyver soundtrack CD they had back then. But then I did that for a bunch of shows in the late 80's and 90's.

I never cared for MacGyver, but I thought RDA was great on Stargate SG-1. The guy has had a hell of a career. Between those two shows, he was in well over 300 episodes.

That was another show I didn't start watching until Season 5. The first episode I was going to watch was "Wormholextreme". But when I found out it was kind of a recap episode I skipped it and started watching the next one. I bought CDs(yes CDs) on ebay of the first five seasons and binge watched them and fell in love with the show.

Around the time the "wormholextreme" epsiode first aired, I needed to create a new username for a online game I had started playing on the PC. I couldn't think of anything so I chose WormholeXtreme, and have been using it ever since for any games I play and also got it for PSN and XBL.
Prior to that I always used aaronwt for any online games I played in 2000/2001 and the late 90's.